In the current difficult economic climate, the technical resources of many EBU Members are stretched to the limit. At the Libre Software Meeting in Brussels earlier this year, RTP's Pedro Landeiro pointed out that "Members' engineering teams are often small and manage R&D, Operations and Support at the same time". At the EBU's DevCon 2013 event in Geneva later this month, attendees will hear how smart deployment of software can help to address these challenges.
The secret, says Garreth Honeycutt of GH Solutions (below left), lies in "doing more, with a small team and the right tools, with automation". However, there's more to this "automate everything" approach than having the right tools. Laura Thomson (below right), of Mozilla Firefox, will emphasise that having the right DevOps culture is crucial. "DevOps is a natural starting point to making your production systems highly available and resilient."
Puppet is one of the leading tools to automate infrastructure in the cloud. Honeycutt, who was previously an engineer with Puppet Labs and currently works on the technology with Ericsson, will introduce this Open Source tool at DevCon. An introductory presentation on day one will be followed by a beginner's guide in a hands-on workshop on the second day. It will be a good opportunity to learn about Puppet from a leading expert, to apply best practises and implement common design patterns.
DevCon 2013 will be the first time the EBU has organized a dedicated conference for developers. This reflects the growing role that software plays in many parts of the broadcast chain. The event will focus on three key themes: Development, Deployment and Data. Across two days there will be a mix of case studies, use cases, technology updates, lightning talks and workshops - and lots of opportunities for networking and exchange!